By Jane Whiting
Circa 2000
It’s hard to believe at the present time that Framingham had a strong agricultural base. There were many dairies, poultry farms, vegetable farms, large greenhouse operations, and apple farms. Farm life was an important way of maintaining a livelihood and raising a family.
Before the decline of farming, during the post-war building boom of WWII, trucks could be seen in town carrying produce, hay, livestock, and milk cans to their destination at the Boston Market or to another farm, or local grocery. Many of the families in Framingham had milk delivery. I can remember anxiously waiting for the Sunshine Dairy milkman to deliver the milk so I could get the cream off the top of the bottle for my cereal before my brother did.
My family used to take a ride on Sunday afternoons. My brother and I would sit in the back seat of my father’s baby-blue Nash. My father would drive and my mother would sit in the front beside him. We would tour the countryside. One Sunday we went by a large, yellow farmhouse on Brook Street with an attached barn and I thought that would be a wonderful place to live. It turned out to be the Pike Row Farm. [Pike Row is the name of a historic neighborhood that runs along Brook Street from Water Street to Belknap Road.]
The farm consisted of thirty-three acres when Frederic W. Whiting, known as Bill, purchased it in 1927. The farm was part of the Corlett Grant of 1661. Bill married Katharine Jameson Rich in 1928. They had two children, Martha and Peter. The farmhouse was in need of repair. There were no screens on the windows and the upstairs was unheated. As children Martha and Peter slept upstairs and wasted little time getting up to get the warmth provided by the wood burning stove in the kitchen. Bill and Katharine did much of the cosmetic work on the house themselves.
Bill was a chicken farmer. [His range consisted of about ten little hen houses in a big field, along with a brooder house for the chicks.] When someone asked Martha as a young girl where chickens came from she answered, “the railroad station.” Bill picked up new chicks shipped via the railroad on a regular basis to upgrade his stock.
In addition to the chickens, the Whitings had cows, pigs, and a pet sheep named Jemima. As a young boy, Peter would struggle with the cows trying to move them from one pasture to another.
As children, if a car came down Brook Street, Peter and Martha would run to see who it was. Brook Street was a dirt road, and during the 1938 hurricane, the family was cut off from friends for two weeks.
The barn burned in 1958 and everything in it was lost. Thanks to the expertise of the Framingham Fire Department the house was spared, and no one was injured. Children playing in the barn had started the blaze. [The barn is considered to be where General Knox quartered the oxen of his cannon train on the way t o Dorchester Heights during the Revolution.]
Katharine canned fruits and vegetables as they were harvested and in later years froze produce for the family’s needs. She made mince-meat and kept beef briskets cured in brine in crocks in the cellar. One day when the children returned home from school, there was a pig’s head simmering on the stove in preparation for making scrapple [sometimes called Philadelphia scrapple, a kind of sausage]. Katharine was known for her fish chowder and creamed salt cold, among other dishes.
Sunday dinner was a time the family gathered to discuss the week’s events, talk about the news, and enjoy each other’s company. This family tradition is still carried on today. Bill had to give up farming because of illness and he and Katharine are no longer with us. Their place at the Sunday dinner table has been filled by the next generation and their offspring.
As a young girl, my family introduced me to Peter. We were married in the 1960s and my wish to live in that yellow farmhouse came true. Shortly after this time, the need for new schools in Framingham became apparent. Then farm land is now the location of Walsh Middle School and Charlotte Dunning Elementary.
Note from the FHC: For 20 years Jane was a collections volunteer for the FHC. She helped catalog hundreds of artifacts. In 2019, she sadly passed away after a long battle with cancer.